The Crisis of Moral Authority

Calvin is worthy to be one of the Gods of today's world.
Now here's a chance to start your own cult from the comfort
of your own home!

"...our current society is moving toward a trend of accepting any moral behavior on the grounds of freedom of choice. It has become "politically incorrect" to speak up and call any social behavior immoral. In this way, I think we as a large society have truly lost our moral compass. If truth exists in this world, then it must be that some things are right, and some things are wrong, no matter how much society would like to accept them..."

The above comment was left on my previous post by a fellow LBC blogger Delirious and is the inspiration for this post. It made me think, one thing then led to another and here we have a post about the crisis of moral authority. What's that got to do with morality? Read on it may just click.

When we are young, everything we are taught and made to do is essentially to cultivate a very peculiar method of conforming to the authority. Authority in all its forms can be seen all around us, but the one I am interested in here for the purpose of this post is that of our role models. Most of us have role models, be they some highly successful people in our society or simply our parents or older siblings or neighbours. They are the ones we look up to, in times of crisis, we tend to think about what they would do in such a situation and because we inherently believe them to be right, we automatically believe that doing what they do will mean we've done the right thing.

My question is this, what standard should we use to judge our role models? If we were to follow in their footsteps and actually "be" right rather than just feel that we have done the right thing, then surely there must be a certain set of criteria they must fulfil to live up to this faith we place in them? Now what if our role models were wrong? We're in big trouble aren't we? Going back to the above comment, in this light it becomes clear that moral integrity is perhaps the most important attribute role models and those in the roles of authority must posses. How true is this in reality though? For someone from my generation, it would be quite obvious to feel our elders, those we looked up to, those with authority cannot be trusted. Why? Well, it was mainly the last 2-3 generations (those born after say 1940 in the West for the sake of argument) who created a lot of problems we face today. World War II, global warming, environmental disasters, selfish consumeristic behaviour, several economic depressions, these many things are scary enough to add any more to this list. How many of these were a result of a wrong choice made by those who could have prevented, averted or otherwise limited the extent of these problems? What made them choose, what hey chose?

I completely agree with Delirious, we as a society, have lost our moral compass. It is frowned upon to say freedom of choice must come with an awareness, acceptance, respect and practice of responsible and moral behaviour. Then there are those who feel morality is arbitrary. To them I say, if this is the case then there is no morality. However, we see several people behave morally too. This only proves that morality exists on the common foundations of truth, honesty and respect for everything and everyone around us. The way we perceive and practice it may differ. Just like the Sun's existence is an irrefutable truth. I from my garden see it up there and yellow, someone living on the top floor of a skyscraper sees it differently, a bird sees it differently still and for an astronaut in space it appears differently yet again. These different perceptions do not affect Sun's existence in anyway.

The point I am trying to make is simply this, the post above may appear as a rant against the others or blaming someone else. But if people from today's generation do not recognise this and change their behaviour, our children and grand-children will perhaps be harsher on us than we can be on our forefathers. They did what they did in the spur of the moment, and those of them who were wise didn't have the means to stop the problems from being created. We on the other hand not only recognise the problem, but also have powerful weapons such as the media and internet to make a bigger difference. If we don't walk the walk, then we would become what some say morally bankrupt.

Everything rests on truth, and its not the truth itself that changes, its only the way we perceive it. So the sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we can start getting out of the mess. Or be prepared to be pushed into crap by some believer of "end justifies the means".

Loose Blogger's Consortium (LBC): Acceptance/Accepting

We have become overly comfortable with acceptance. It seems to me that in this day and age, most of us (or certainly a majority of us in the urban/westernised/industrialised regions of the world) accept anything and everything that's thrown at us. By accepting here I am referring to a behaviour which is more akin to unquestioning conformity. Social psychologists have been pulling their hair apart for decades if not centuries to understand the whole concept of how groups behave, conformity and so on. The problem, however, is that things we have been accepting in this manner may not necessarily be good for us and most of them are not, if only were pause for a moment to question their validity and just think about them objectively. This is hardly the case though. Good time to give some examples in defence of this observation.

Everyone likes watching TV and it is generally accepted social norm to do so. Indeed several conversations people have everyday are in some sort of way related to something they watched on the TV. While there is nothing inherently wrong with watching TV, the problem starts with the content we watch. Like most things, TV can be a good and a bad thing, but taking a long term perspective, it may well have done more harm than good to those who prefer watching anything that results in lower utilisation of their ability to think. Advertisement is probably the biggest devil, followed closely by sensationalist media, programmes about celebrities, soap-operas of course and a whole other load of rubbish.

Similarly, we tend to accept processed food without judging its actual merit. Corporations and governments alike are hardly ever keen to talk about this subject. Most people would never realise but over 80% of processed food contains corn and soya in some form or another. It would take us forever to go over why this is a problem. I think it would be fair to suggest that we begin with an assumption that processed food is bad for us. We can debate the truth behind this while we are not eating it, as chances are it would do us more good than harm anyway. Plus it has been proved beyond doubt that this is true. Michael Pollan, an American author and New York Times columnist has gone as far as calling the whole processed food deal as "...Corn's evolutionary strategy to overtake the world while humans pretend to be the smartest species..." For those interested, I would recommend watching his documentary Food Inc. If that doesn't change the way you think about food, nothing will. It may be funny and diffuse the tension for a bit but it doesn't change the obvious fact that nothing beats eating healthy, organic and un-processed food as much as possible. As for the arguments about organic food being too fancy and unaffordable, I will be trying to dispel this myth in subsequent posts on this topic.

The list of such acceptable and indeed expected things to do also include being in debt, which is now considered normal and a lot of times we inevitably get into it whether we like it or not. Also consumerism has become a lot more acceptable. Do we really need that new mobile phone every 18 months? Do we really need to upgrade our cars, computers, home appliances, gadgets every so often and buy every new item that's out there? I doubt it. I admit of being guilty to some of these myself but that makes my questioning all the more appealing. It feels good now to be on the other end of the tunnel and knowing for sure that the light you saw really exists. The list is endless.

So here's what we can try doing to make our lives better and in turn make a difference to everyone including the environment.

1. Avoid processed/fast food as much as possible. Buy local and in season products. Look out for that green, recycled or Fair Trade logos where available. It won't kill us to not have Mangoes, Strawberries or Watermelons all year round.
2. Stop watching and more importantly believing everything they show on the TV. It is perfectly fine to watch some of the stuff they show on TV but we only need to think before wasting hours in front of the idiot box. One would realise, as I did, that most of what we watch is rubbish and we can easily live without it if not have a better life without it. No harm giving it a try. The feeling of liberation and saving time is amazing.
3. Try not getting into debt as much as possible. We can live perfectly happily without credit cards, store cards, jumping at "buy now pay later" deals and falling for personal loans our banks try to sell us. Having said this though, credit is a good way to leverage when used sensibly and responsibly. Recklessness is what causes all the trouble.

These may be small things but if enough people do them, we will be living in a happier world within no time. We just need to take a stand and refuse to accept things at face value. More ranting will continue in future posts.

____________________________________________________________________________________

I hope you enjoyed reading this post for the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium, where Anu, Conrad, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Magpie11, Maria the Silver Fox, Noor, Padmum, Paul, Ramana, Shackman, The Old Fossil, Will Knott, and I write on the same topic. Please visit the other blogs to get eleven different takes on today's topic, chosen by Shackman. Do visit their blogs to see different takes on the same topic.

Dreams

I believe in one thing slightly more than others, the power of dreams. Dreams are what separates humans from other life forms. We have this unique ability to weave a wonderful mesh of thoughts and colour it with fantastic imagination which is indeed what makes us special. What I think is more interesting, however, is not the fact that we can dream, but we are the only ones on this planet who can manifest these dreams into reality. Thoughts have a language of its own. We can translate it into reality. This is by far the best thing about being humans I think.

It is important to put this in perspective. What is unique to say, for instance, a monkey? Its tail of course! It uses the tail everyday, every minute of its life. What is unique to birds? Wings. They use these everyday to fly. How many of us are confident of putting our unique ability to use? Isn't it true that most of us are afraid of dreaming dreams? We tend to fear dreaming about changes we wish to bring in our lives. Perhaps its more a fear of failure and disappointments than of dreaming. Dreams only hold good if they could cross that boundary between thought and reality and manifest! Life simply cannot become beautiful without dreams. Dreams define the purpose of our existence. Dreams are the path to fulfilling our destinies. No dream is too idyllic or unreachable so long as we recognise the extent of our potential and have the courage and determination to create our own reality every living moment, rather than living in the reality which others have created for us! This is where a very important point must be understood. The journey to making these dreams real is solely what gives our dreams the value they possess. Dreams are only means to the end, not an end in itself.

Life is that which we never know it is, and when it starts unfolding, we realise that even we ourselves are not what we thought we were. Slowly and steadily as one begins to comprehend the mysteries of existence and realise the truths of what we refer to as "life", one begins to become isolated from the homogeneous monotony of the mundane realism. This isolation at the deeper and subtler levels of our being is what equips us with an extraordinarily immense potential. This is what can help manifest even what appear to be most unrealistic dreams. Its just a matter of unlocking this potential and putting it to good use. Those who are successful become more and more confident and dream ever bigger and grandiose dreams, for they now know how to transform dreams into reality. They dare to trespass into the realms of pure vivid creativity, of magical transformation of their lives, and those of the deepest desires of their hearts waiting to manifest. They now learn to live their dreams, at times so much so, that a sudden warp of time as if it were, transports them from what were their dreams to what then becomes the very realities of their lives! All it takes is a moment. A moment of self-belief. A moment of confidence. a moment of determination. After that only the sky is the limit!

I would like to end this post with a quote I had come across a while ago, not sure by whom but something that inspired me in a way to alter my perception of life and sowed the seed of that possibility of believing in my dreams. All we need is to live by it...

"Dreams are like the paints of great artists. The world is like their canvas. Believing in those dreams is the brush which transforms those dreams into the masterpiece of reality!"

Calibrating Life

This post is going to be a follow on from the previous post on Love. I mentioned Platonic "ideas" in it, so let's begin by a quick introduction to it. Plato is considered to be one of the greatest philosopher ever, and was a student of an even greater mind we know by the name of Socrates. Plato's theory was that everything we see around is just a reflection of the ideal and perfect original thing in the world of ideas. Basically, he said that all there are, are ideas, which gives the world the meaning. I do not intend to write about the world of ideas and Plato but just some of those ideas which I feel form the core of our humanity, around which everything revolves.

I was having this discussion today with a close member of my family (cannot disclose who) about heavy stuff such as morality, ethics, righteousness and principles. I can't quite remember from what this stemmed out of. According to him, the way we live our life must be dictated by circumstantial desires. For instance, if a person feels like having a chocolate, just have one. If he feels like sleeping, sleep. You name it. This, according to him, is freedom. I guess I wrote about freedom earlier so won't go into details here. I am just curious to know what your thoughts are about this and if you agree or disagree. If you disagree, then why and what is your alternative explanation.

I have come to believe from experiences thus far, that I do not agree with this. I am certain that life is worth a lot more than being treated as a puppet of desires. It is absolutely essential to have regards about concepts of morality, rights and wrongs. It sure is a risky business, where boundaries blur and human intellect may fall short of change. However, just like there is always a standard for measurements and things, there is a standard framework, which if followed, ensures that most certainly, life will be a pleasurable experience. I am not concerned with what people think about life, some may feel there is only one life, others may believe in the concept of a cycle of births and deaths. This, I feel applies to all. It's a standard after all, which by default must be universally adaptable and applicable. So then, I believe this standard comprises of a few important ingredients, namely - Truth, Morality, Righteousness, Discrimination power and Integrity. Truth is the root of all. Without truth, there is no standard model. Whatever is truth is moral and righteous. If one takes to truth, one without any effort starts acting in a moral and righteous fashion. This can only be achieved by the power of discrimination between what is good and what is bad. What one does is never good or bad, only the intentions behind doing it are good or bad. This polar duality is simply an expansion of truth, which can only be non dual. Finally, if one lives life in line with this standard framework, truthfully, morally and rightly, one develops integrity of character. This is a big thing. It makes the person worthy of imitation. What such a man does, others tend to follow.

This brings us to a question of who decides what is moral, what is right, what is true? Surely truths can't be multiple. For now, my conclusion is that anything which promotes the well being of self and others around, must be encouraged and done, rest must be rejected. Anything which takes us a step closer to our ultimate goal, liberation must be done. Anything which spreads love, reduce divisions and increases unity must never be given up. All else, which is divisive in nature, is to be loathed. What we seem to ignore is the fact that if we wish to see the change in world, the change must begin with ourself. We should become what we want others to be. Simply put, only those actions which encourage Truth, Love and Compassion must be performed, as they lead to knowledge.

Birth

It was a mid-summer morning, British summer so nothing exotic. I had finished over one year of IB and of living in the UK. It felt different. There was a change in me, I could feel it. I might as well call this a transformation, or metamorphosis to be more precise. I was sitting in my window, looking at and talking to the clouds (which is only my second love in life). There was a sense of renewal, freshness and fragrant joy. It may just be that first I was looking at clouds, had just finished my Epistemology essay and a sudden realisation of the change in me...but I was new. This is the first time in my memory, that I actually gave some serious thought to this concept of 'birth'. Is it just the day we were born? If it were then there wouldn't have been so much fuss about it with regards to the essence of this word. We are born every moment. Everything there is, is too. Whether it be the leaves of trees which are born again every spring, the cells of our body, drops of rain or even our very thoughts. Everything.

It really is all about change. Like the day mentioned above when I was feeling all new, challenges, obstacles and moments of truth in life kill and renew us every moment. There are three parts to it - Conception, Birth and Renewal. Conception or the seed of life, once sowed, will leave an impression. If it survives and is actually is born, then it leaves a greater impression. Finally if it survives to mature and realise the mystery of renewal, then it leaves the highest possible imprint. Impression on what, one may ask. It's simply the impression that's left on the mirror of our self. Most of what is conceived is not born. Most of what is born, does not reach renewal. However, once the renewal is achieved one can be sure to have found the right path. It is possible to forget these moments of renewal and the lessons learnt, no harm done there. Slowly though, the sincere one realises the immense power of these renewals. Essentially, I believe that having born is not the ultimate thing in the hierarchy of importance. We all get a chance to renew, to start again, to make a new beginning. Life is kind. The problem is, however, that we are clinging on the that which was lost so much that we find it hard to embrace this renewal. We are not able to celebrate this moment of birth! Every moment when you unravel a deeper layer of yourself, you are born anew.

There are two very important things I'd like to mention at this point. These are just the lessons I've learnt so far which made me reach this conclusion. First, the book by Paulo Coelho, 'The Pilgrimage'. In this, the author has related a pilgrim's journey to the journey of life. One of the things he talks about is How to be born again. The elaborate procedure is not of relevance here, but to summarise, it's all about digging deep within, rather than reaching out farther and farther. The farther you stretch, the sooner you'll snap. The deeper you dig, the more easy it becomes to access that immense potential within. So, if one is determined, it's never that hard to be born again. Second thing is what I learn't from a Gypsy's Tarot deck. Cards XXVIII (18) - Conception, XIX (19) - Birth and XX (20) - Renewal of the Major Arcana, contain the secrets to what may be the first lessons of life. She said one thing which I can never forget, "Everyone who is born, dies; but everyone who has born again by renewal, is immortal! For him, there is no death. His body may go back to earth from where it came, but the deeds he does, and seeds he sows are never wasted. They always bear sweet fruit." It was profound.

If we realise these moments of renewal and seize them, then we can enjoy them all and celebrate the birth. Every such moment can then become a flash of enlightenment, and numerous such flashes are bright enough to drive away the thick darkness which dwells in our minds. Darkness has no existence of it's own. It is simply the absence of light. Ignorance has no existence of itself, it is just the absence of knowledge. Death has no existence of it's own, it only comes in the absence of birth; death of the body, a thought, or that of renewal. It's the same state as stagnation at one level. Whatever stagnates, is destroyed...for good!

P.S.: It's been over a month since some of my blogger friends and I decided to begin group-blogging. We decided the first topic to be this, for obvious reasons, and since then had been making excuses every time the topic of not having posted yet comes up. Having said that, time has now come to really begin. So to introduce this quickly, me and my friends Introspective Blogger andMystery of Life will choose a topic for every week, on which we will all post. This will be open to comments and any further debates.

Clarification about the previous post, 'Hare and The Tortoise'

Following my previous post, a reader asked a few questions about the validity of my argument. While replying I realised that the explanation is too long for a comment. So here it is as a blogpost. All follow up comments can be posted on here or the previous post. So referring to Nukul's argument, it's all a matter of how you look at the matter. One can either take a reductionist, rationalist, pragmatic or an inclusive view. The only way to try and answer your question would be to go deeper still and start from the beginning.

A reductionist will simply say, there is race, there are good and bad guys and there is a carrot at the end. I want the carrot, rest can do as they please. Rationalist will analyse every aspect of the argument and in the end will say, well, each to his own. Pragmatic people will think of this as an unrealistic thing and would say that as long as you get that carrot, nobody really cares how you managed to get it. The one with an inclusive view, however, would say that ok the fact is that there is a race, there are good and bad people, there is carrot and there is the need to attain that illusive state of detachment. How shall I go about it? Firstly, the fact that I am suffering due to this stress of rat race implies my own deeds in the past which brought me here. Now that I am here, there are two things I must do. Identify how to be detached while being a part of this world and master that thing in a way that once you are successful, you can lead by example. Nobody takes a looser seriously. A winner, on the other hand gets accolades even the court of fools.

So if one is intelligent enough to ponder over these complicated concepts of detachment, eternal happiness, etc. then one must consider himself lucky, become a winner in the material sense and while doing all this, still remaining calm, detached, peaceful and have a humble attitude of surrender.

Simply put, the answer to your question is, you can't escape the need to work in this world, then do it in a way that you don't get entangled at least. So that you are a part of the race, but not stressed out like the rest. You can then even concentrate upon enjoying the race itself and learning along the way. It's like Mario...he has to cross levels and collect gems on his way to the final stage after which he is happy. It's the same with us. We are helpless only so long as we resist the flow of destiny, and make the mistake of thinking that the doer and enjoyer is "I"...the moment one realises what the real "I" is, questions simply dissolve. Pragmatists, reductionists and rationalists should try this approach. There is no harm in trying. If one is still not convinced after experiencing this for thmselves, then so be it. All izz well, regardless of the outcome. We change, truth doesn't. Only that which is stable despite changes can be real.

Hare and the Tortoise

I've been thinking for a while about the topic for my next blog post. While a friend was visiting for dinner tonight, he recommended me to watch a 1970's hit bollywood flick called 'Katha' (which means 'story'). It was inspired by the popular bed time tale of the Hare and the Tortoise, the one where the tortoise (who is slow and steady) wins the race...!BUT!...adapted to the modern society and how things have changed since then. The moral of this story was bit of a double entendré, so you decide. This post is not going to be a film review, but rather a narration of how another piece of puzzle fell in it's place in my mind after introspection.

Before I begin though, the nature of this post necessitates that I briefly introduce the plot and characters. Usual spoiler warning applies. So then, it begins with a stereotypical "nice" guy living in a big city, possessing the usual typical traits of excessive honesty, altruism, overly principled life, rigid notions of rights and wrongs, unambitious nature and a general inability to understand the machinations of this big bad world! He loves the girl who lives next door but can't gather the courage to tell her. One fine day, along comes one of his smart, forward-thinking, open minded, fast-talking friends who quickly makes himself at home. Mr. Nice Guy obliges and does not resist. Using his quick wit and charm, Mr. Friend manages to land a very good job at Mr. Nice Guy's company, that too as his manager. Effectively, Mr. Friend is a "bluffmaster", a conman who always manages to find his way by fooling vulnerable folks. Eventually he manages to woo the company owner's wife AND daughter at the same time, and while demonstrating his excellent multi-tasking abilities, he ALSO manages to woo the girl next door who Mr. Nice Guy loves like anything. Finally, he fools them all, and fooling an Arab Sheikh, flees to Dubai ready to carry on his business there. The girl next door is deeply saddened, but Mr. Nice Guy marries her. The film ends with a cartoon...the tortoise did win the race after all, but the hare arrived sitting on the tortoise's back and took away all the limelight, making the tortoise look like the hare's slave. Tortoise did get awarded with a bouquet, but of dead flowers, while the hare got fresh ones. Quite suggestive.

Apparently the script writer wanted to suggest that if one has to win in this competitive world then one has to be cunning, yes that's the word I was looking for. Perhaps honesty, polity, kindness, etc. are better left in the past, like museum specimens where the world could laugh at them. This is open to interpretation.

However, what difference does winning, indeed even loosing makes if all one is doing, is playing just for the joy of it? After all, the most successful sportsmen are always those who don't play to win but for the sheer love of the sport! Somebody's victory is another's defeat, and vice versa. Who looses now, may gain tomorrow. Change is the very nature of life. Just think for a moment, is it really needed to participate in this race? What we are experiencing right now, is an effect of what we did in the past. For instance, I am still not able to sleep because I drank too much coffee today. Then why create more causes and invite more effects and keep being obliged to participate in these races? What's the point anyway? I am not trying to say that being ambitious is wrong, but I strongly believe that it's not WHAT you do, but WHY you do it that matters. Intentions determine consequences.

¬¬Time and again I can't help but feel helpless for having to write in English...it's such a dead and superficial language! No offences intended but I feel so fortunate to have a mother tongue in which at most times, a single word is enough to express the deepest feelings of the heart! ¬¬

Anyhow, back to the point, and taking this at a deeper level of understanding, I feel that the excitement of victory or the lamentations of defeat only affect those who are rigidly attached to these concepts. Concepts, that's all they are. Would we ever trust a fickle friend? Then why do we trust our mind, who is not only fickle but only pretends to be a friend?

It's funny to be a bystander sometimes and observe life. We tend to complicate it so much! It's always those thoughts which arise from passion or ignorance which complicate things and create suffering. Why not just be a free bird and make the entire existence a part of our being? The infinite joy of that feeling of oneness is beyond words; its brilliance outshines a million suns! Is it really that hard to be innocent? Is it really that hard to be righteous? It's only being cunning that takes more effort. When one experiences detachment even while living in this short transitionary world, which is inherently unfair; then alone one understands, in fact experiences even the futility of this rat race. Then alone, shall the hundred petalled lotus bloom! Lifetimes after lifetimes, we keep running like a guinea pig on a treadmill, never even sighting the perceived finish line, let alone reach it! All it really takes is simply realising that if I want to reach it indeed, then I simply need to get down from the treadmill and just take a real step ahead. The freedom one experiences thus, is truly incomparable. We just feel that these little victories make us happy. In reality, however, they are just pushing us deeper and deeper into the quick sand of suffering. There is only one way out, reaching out to those who have succeeded before you, they are right there beside you...just ask them!

There are over 7 billion people in this world, I wonder how many think out of the box, how many understand the need to wake up! People always run after objects of sense gratification...some are mad for more money, some simply want to eat, some are crazy in lust, while others still are haunted by the desire to achieve material success which they guise under the term, ambition; some others are just too lazy to be even bothered to wake up from their slumber! If I had one wish to ask for, then all I would want is to never become a part of that group of people, and for this feeling of detachment to deepen and blossom. Sadly due to recession most types of genie lamps are out of stock, so looks like I'll have to fend for myself. So be it.

P.S: If anybody is interested in watching the movie, then you can click here to go to the link on YouTube. There are 14 parts, but definitely worth it I'd say.